Aaron Hahn Tapper

Associate Professor

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, the Mae and Benjamin Swig Associate
Professor in Jewish Studies, is the founding Director of the USF
Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice.

Aaron completed his Ph.D. in the Religious Studies Department at
the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied the History of Religions, Modern Islamic Movements, Nonviolence and Religion, Political Religion, and wrote his
Dissertation on the relationship between the socio-political
context of Israel and Palestine, Jewish and Islamic religious law,
and power. With an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a BA from Johns Hopkins University, his primary academic interest is the
intersection between identity formation, social justice, and
marginalized groups.

Aaron has lived and studied abroad in a number of places,
including Bir Zeit, Cairo, Fes, the Hague, and Jerusalem.
Academically fluent in multiple dialects of Hebrew and Arabic, he
has received numerous awards and fellowships for his work,
including the Harvard University Frederick Sheldon Traveling
Fellowship, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship,
and the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. In 2003 he founded Abraham's
Vision, a conflict transformation organization working with
Muslims, Jews, Palestinians, and Israelis, for whom he served
as Co-Executive Director through May 2013. He is the Executive
Director of the Center for
Transformative Education, an educational initiative aiming to
create empowering educational programs to transform societies into
their potential, which he co-founded in 2008.

During the 2013-14 academic year, while on sabbatical leave, he was conducting research on reconciliation in Australia as a Fulbright Senior Scholar.

Administrative Appointments

Director, Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social JusticeMae and Benjamin Swig Chair in Jewish Studies

Publications

2015, Book

Judaisms: A Twenty-First Century Introduction to Jewish IdentitiesScheduled to be published Spring 2015University of California Press

2015, Book ChapterWho is a Jew? Reflections on History, Religion, and Culture“Will the ‘Real’ Jew Please Stand Up! Karaites, Israelites, Messianists, and the Kabbalah Centre”Scheduled to be published Spring 2015Purdue University Press

2011, BookMuslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions, and ComplexitiesCo-Editor and Essay Author, “The War of Words: Jews, Muslims, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on American University Campuses”Palgrave Macmillan